Following a number of rather alarming articles in the New Scientist. The UK isn’t figuring high on the list. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
Here is a good selection of tasty climate-alarmist facts.
1. 20% of arctic ice has melted since 1978. This creates a feedback effect because water reflects less sunlight than ice.
2. The permafrost in the west-Sibrian peatlands, covering an area the size of France and Germany combined, are starting to melt. This is a tipping point climate-wise because it will release billions of tonnes of trapped methane into the atmosphere. Methane (CH4) is 20 times more effective a greenhouse gas than CO2.
3. The speed of the global ocean circulation system known as the conveyor belt was found to be faltering in 2005 as evidenced by a 30 percent reduction in the norhtward flow of warm water from the Gulf Stream over the past decade. It switches off completely quite often even without our help (e.g. once for 300 years about 8000 years ago) at this point the UK will become a big sheet of ice instead of a big carpark.